The great news is it can annoy everyone, because having the message of 'it's a cool story someone made up so people could feel better about themselves' isn't really the fundamentalist line either
Agreed with both. And not only the moral seem terrible, it struck me as untruthful to have the previous chapters put so much detail in explaining how Pi survived at sea with a tiger by using careful training and knowledge of animal psychology, only to label it at the end as the "unrealistic" story. Suddenly calling it the unbelievable story when we were believing it just made the moral seem even more forced.
It doesn't even make story metaphor sense. If someone came up to us and said that they'd even survived in a boat with a tiger and visited a cannibalistic island with meerkats or they were trapped on a boat with humans who did horrible things to each other, there is no way someone in the real world would believe the first story.
When a girl gets assaulted and says she was attacked by aliens; the vast majority of humans would assume that what people did to her was so traumatic that this is her coping mechanism.
If it serves of any consolation, the story the book is loosely based on plays a similar game.
Speaking from the religious side, I totally agree with your reasoning here. The author of the book was trying to discuss faith, but whether his protagonist or the writer himself, he did end up sounding like "It's cooler than real life." He wanted to have a "the tiger story is more meaningful this way, thus it gives me something more than what other story did," which could be great if the story was about a person's emotional experience/response to distress, example the film [[Thefall The Fall]]. Unfortunately, it's about a guy (mis?)representing concrete, verifiable events. In that case, it's what Tomwithnonumbers said, it just sounds like a coping mechanism rather than a religious experience.
and yeah the writer doesn't understand agnosticism at all.
illegitematus non carborundum est
Okay, seriously? The author writes a commentary about the nature of spirituality, and you complain that it has too much religious subtext? Forest for the trees, my friend. I'm amazed at the lack of digression in every comment here. What a bunch of literalists.
I agree with Droemar: the entire point of the book is to decide which narrative you prefer: Do you want to escape the brutality of story #2? Are you too cynical to accept the implausible-but-not-impossible story #1? There's no "evidence" wither way, so it's completely up to the reader to decide.
And it still fails at adressing agnosticism.
"...Are you too cynical to accept the implausible-but-not-impossible story #1?"
I leave this excerpt here, for comedic posterity.
I hated the ending too. The film was in general a masterpiece, but the ending is basically "I lied. Yes, you heard that right. Shyamalan-a-dingdong!"
PS. I know Mr. Shyamalan has nothing to do with this. I just felt the twist would be of his nature.
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Great Until the Ending
To be blunt, the ending was a slap in the face. I'm an atheist, and my father was an agnostic, so I'm rather emotional about the issue. I enjoyed the adventure just fine, found it very exciting and realistic (ignoring the island, which was cool enough to let slide), but then the ending. The second story. I wasn't horrified by it. I've read too many stories of cannibalism to be fazed by it. It would've been cool if the second story was a completely different book, but nope. Gotta stir up the readers, make them wonder which really happened. Even worse, they put a religious tint on the whole thing. I really have no care either way towards religion; people can do whatever they please as long as they don't bother me about it. However, I think it rather insulting that the author expects you to believe in the first story (and, subsequently, God) on the basis that "It sounds ridiculous, and it is, but doesn't it sound cooler than logic?" As much spice as you put on it, that's what it boils down to. I find that flat out insulting. Rule of Cool is not something to put religious faith into. Even worse was the treatment of agnostics, when they aren't even explained correctly! They aren't indecisive, they know there's no way of knowing and accept that!
If they'd cut out the copious amounts of religious subtext in it, I would've loved this book to death, but just the way they end it bothers me greatly.